CURRENT WORK
Anthropology in Public
Articles and Talks
Blogs
Founded in 2005, Savage Minds is a collective blog offering an online forum for discussing the state of the field and for engaging interested audiences beyond the discipline and the academy. I am an “Occasional Mind”, guest blogging on issues related to war violence and militarization.
Here is a Savage Minds post about the anthropological dimensions of photographer Tim Hetherington’s work, occasioned by his death in Lybia in 2011.
Here is one about Wikileaks 2010 release of 92,000 primary documents from the war in Afghanistan.
And here is one about the linguistic construction of the 2009 shooting at the US Army’s Ft. Hood, and of perpetrator Maj. Nadal Hasan.
Neuroanthropology is a collaborative weblog created to encourage exchanges among anthropology, philosophy, social theory, and the brain sciences. Trauma Inside Out is my guest post about Traumatic Brain Injury, Post-traumatic Stress Disorder, and the fraught relationship between physical and mental trauma in the context of contemporary American war.
Reports
The Costs of War Project brings together two dozen researchers and experienced experts from the fields of economics, anthropology, political science, history, journalism, law, and medicine, to outline a broad understanding of the domestic and international costs and consequences of the U.S. led post 9/11 military interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.
Given my experience working with US soldiers and their families, I contributed to the section of the report that discusses the ramifying impacts of the current pace of deployments on members of the military, their families, and their broader communities.
In the Media
2011
Here is a story from Albany NPR affiliate WAMC about the rising costs of caring for returning veterans which includes some of my comments.
I was interviewed by the Russian paper Izvestia for this story about the changing nature of military injuries and the ongoing care they require.
2010
As the U.S. was preparing to begin the draw down of troops in Iraq, I was interviewed by the National Post about what their homecoming might look like.
Cultural Collaborations
Ongoing
I am consulting with dancer and choreographer Heidi Strauss as she develops a new project exploring experiences of intimacy and collectivity, relationship between them, the cultural forces exerted on human behaviour, and collective human responses to time and demand.
2011
Picturing Soldiers: The Aesthetics and Ethics of Soldier Photography
This was a panel I organized and moderated featuring Tim Hetherington, Lori Ginker, Jennifer Karady, and Suzanne Opton.
The event was hosted by the Rhode Island School of Design, and sponsored by RISD’s Fine Arts Division, TC Colley Lecture Series, Departments of Photography and Film/Animation/Video and Painting, and Office of Student Life. Co-sponsored by Brown University’s Department of Modern Culture and Media and Watson Institute Global Media Project.
Here is the poster for the event, and below is an abstract:
Here you’ll find information about some of my recent writing and talks, as well as a variety of other related projects that fall under the headings anthropology in public and cultural collaborations. For more complete information, see my CV.
Selected publications
n.d.
On Movement: The Matter of Space and Soldiers’ Bodies after Combat, revised manuscript under review with Ethnos
2012
Labors of Love: The Transformation of Care in the Non-Medical Attendant Program at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Co-authored with Seth Messinger Medical Anthropology Quarterly 26(1).
2009
The US Military and the Social Life of War, with Erin Finley and Kenneth MacLeish, Anthropology News. In Focus: Veteran Identity 50(5)
2007
Operationalizing Iraqi Freedom: Govermentality, Neoliberalism and New Public Management in the War in Iraq, International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy. 27(11/12):460-468
selected talks
2011
In Defence of Intimacy: Soldier Identity and Masculinity in Today’s Military, with Aaron Belkin and Brian Selmeski, Annual Gender Studies Research Roundtable, Whitman College, November 1st
Orienting the Injured Soldier’s Body: Masculinity and its Attachments at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Insitute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research, Rutgers University, October 20th
"For What You Do": Injured U.S. Soldiers and the Im-possibilities of Regret, Centre for Ethnography, University of Toronto, Scarborough, February 17th
2010
Earth Shattering: Movement as Worlding for U.S. Soldiers Marked by Combat, Circulation: 107th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, New Orleans, November 17th
Vital Signs and Möbius Time: Frayed Ordinaries at Walter Reed, School of Advanced Research, Santa Fe, NM, August 4th
2009
Subjects of Sacrifice: The Im/possibilities of Everyday Life at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, The End/s of Anthropology: 108th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Philadelphia, December 3rd
Producing Patriots: An Economy of Patriotism at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Centre for Study of the United States, Munk Center for International Studies, Toronto, April 23rd
To portray a soldier is to render a freighted icon, a figure whose contours are often determined by histories of war and narratives of nationalism.
Each in their own way, the photographers on this panel respond to these contours, offering tender portraits, graphic compositions, and candid glimpses of soldiers’ lives, dreams, and nightmares that together add up to more than any one flattened image of a conquering hero or traumatized veteran.
In the current moment, each of the 2 million American service members who have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan lend an urgency to the enduring questions of what it means to picture soldiers in American public culture today.
Problematizing the iconic soldier image by evoking the complexities of life in war and after, our moderated multi-media discussion will span questions of medium and message, getting at the heart of the “ethics of seeing” that photographs of soldiers entail.
“
”
